How to Set Up a Conflict Check Process for Your Law Firm

What is a conflict check at a law firm?

At its core, a conflict check helps ensure you don’t represent a client whose interests conflict with your own, or with those of a current or former client. While the concept sounds simple, the American Bar Association (ABA) Model Rules outline several detailed provisions that govern conflicts of interest. These rules exist to protect clients, uphold professional integrity, and help lawyers avoid ethical missteps that could jeopardize a case or their reputation.

Why conflict checks matter

Some lawyers say that the worst thing to happen if you botch a conflict of interest check is that you find out too late. At that point, either someone else takes over the case, or you convince the affected clients to sign waivers. That’s probably true in most cases. In others, the delay in swapping out counsel or chasing conflict waivers can harm your client (consider a client waiting on a payoff in an injury case or with an upcoming statute of limitations deadline).

Besides, there’s the appearance of impropriety. These days, that’s enough to get your name plastered all over the internet by an angry former client bitter about you representing his ex-spouse in a new matter. You don’t want to deal with that. An attorney conflict check software will help you spot the issue and prepare before you’re surprised with bar complaints and internet reviews.

By proactively running a conflict check, especially through an automated, centralized system like Clio, you can identify potential issues before they escalate and demonstrate your firm’s commitment to ethical practice.

What counts as a law firm conflict of interest?

There are many types of lawyer misconduct, and they’ve occurred at such a frequency that formal rules have been created. Here’s a list of potential conflicts of interest a lawyer may encounter:

• Representing two clients whose interests oppose each other (e.g. Co-defendants in a criminal case who might want to snitch on each other).
• Taking on a client where your abilities to lawyer are limited due to responsibilities to a current, former, or third person (personal interest of the lawyer).
• If you represent the opposing party in the same matter after dropping a client.
• Representing a party when your former firm represented the other side and you were exposed to information about the case.
• Entering into a business transaction with a client or ownership/pecuniary position opposite to the interests of your client.
• Using information gained when representing a client to harm that client.
• Soliciting a gift—including a testamentary gift—from a client, unless the lawyer is closely related to the client.
• Securing the movie or literary rights to the client’s story, at least until the case is done.
• Providing financial assistance to a client in connection with the pending litigation, with limited exceptions for advancing costs (repayment contingent on case outcome) or covering costs for indigent clients.
• Letting a third-party pay the bill, unless the client gives consent, the lawyer’s judgment isn’t swayed, and client privacy is maintained.
• Negotiating aggregated civil settlements or criminal pleas for multiple clients.
• Making an agreement prospectively limiting malpractice liability.
• Settling a malpractice claim with an unrepresented party unless that person is given the opportunity and written advice to seek counsel.

All of the above applies to every attorney in your law firm.

That’s a lot to consider, right? And I simplified the rules for the sake of this article. There’s a lot more, plus notes, in ABA Model Rules 1.7, 1.8 and 1.9.

There are many ways to run into conflict with your client, and as you’ll note from the above list, many can be spotted at the outset of a case. This is the point of a law firm conflict check. It’s to spot and deal with these issues before signing a client and potentially running into trouble.

What’s the remedy to these conflicts of interest? For nearly all of them, informed consent suffices. Best practice, if you must take the case, is to give them the opportunity, in writing, to retain counsel regarding the potential conflict. Both the former client and current client must consent.

A better remedy, assuming the client has other options for counsel, is to not take the case on at all. Write a non-engagement letter clearly explaining that you are not taking on the case, and that the potential client needs to look elsewhere. If you know about a statute of limitations or other pressing issue, including a warning to that effect is a good practice as well.

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Common mistakes with law firm conflict checks

The most common mistake with a law firm conflict check is simply not doing it. A lot of attorneys rely on memory. This is obviously a bad idea. Names change, memories fade, and if you do any volume work at all, you’ll lose track of the people you talked to last week, let alone from years’ prior.

Another common misstep is to maintain inadequate records. Many attorneys maintain a simple list of their own former clients. However, usually not of associated parties, opposing parties, or the contacts of fellow attorneys in their current and former places of employment. 

Today, firms no longer need to rely on spreadsheets or manual recordkeeping. Clio’s Conflict Check centralizes and automates this process, allowing users to run or re-run searches across all of Clio Manage and Clio Grow, review flagged results, and store PDF reports for compliance documentation.

Creating an ​​attorney conflict check procedure at your law firm

The starting point for a law firm conflict check is to maintain a database of all relevant contacts. This means former clients, opposing parties, etc. 

Here’s a list of things you should track for accurate conflict checking:

• Full legal name;
• Maiden and married names;
• Nickname(s);
• Date of birth;
• Address;
• Phone;

For businesses, you’ll want to include:

• Business name;
• Officers and directors;
• Partners;
• Trade names;
• Place of incorporation

Not all of this information will change over time. If you come across a close match, at least you can cross-reference birth dates, maiden names, etc. that require further investigation.

When should a conflict of interest check happen?

A conflict check should always happen before a consultation is scheduled. If your firm handles a high volume of phone or online inquiries, the team member managing intake should quickly run a search for potential conflicts using your database—or better yet, Clio’s Conflict Check.

You’ll want to check the potential client and opposing party for close matches, misspellings (John, Jon, Johnathan, Jonathan), and former names. Once the check is complete, record the results of the check, including the date and time the check was done.

If a conflict is flagged, or even suspected, the person answering the phone can schedule a follow-up call with the attorney to discuss the matter. Indicate that the firm has time to investigate (and to evaluate whether the case is worth dealing with conflict waivers).

The time it takes to properly conduct a thorough conflict check varies depending on a number of factors such as the complexity and comprehensiveness of your law firm’s database and the specific conflict-checking system you use. Using a manual process, a conflict check could take hours. With the help of tools and technology, however, conflict checks can be completed in minutes or even seconds (more on this later).

Conflict checks are easy with Clio

With Clio, this information doesn’t live in multiple systems, it’s all in one place. Conflict Check searches across your entire Clio account, including matters, contacts, documents, and notes, to uncover potential overlaps. You can even customize your search depth, run multiple checks at once, and record outcomes automatically for your audit trail.

Conflict check software and technology for law firms

In the old days, folks would tell young lawyers to break out three binders, or three stacks of notecards, and track clients, opposing parties, and associated contacts in the three respective places. That sounds a bit like sending a telegraph, or tapping out a 30-page memo on a typewriter.

These days, you will probably use technology to help maintain a database of contacts and conduct an attorney conflict check. Here are a few tools that can help with the conflict checking process.

Practice management solutions

Conflict checking is now seamless across your firm’s entire workflow. With Clio’s integrated Conflict Check in both Clio Manage and Clio Grow, you can search your firm’s full client journey, from intake to active matters, in one step.

Whether your intake team is screening new leads in Clio Grow or your attorneys are opening new matters in Clio Manage, Conflict Check automatically scans across contacts, matters, calendar events, notes, and documents to uncover potential issues.

You can also run multiple checks at once, re-run them at any stage of the matter lifecycle, and generate detailed PDF reports that document your review for compliance purposes.

By uniting intake and practice management data, Clio gives your firm complete visibility and confidence in every client relationship—helping you stay compliant without slowing down your onboarding process.

The video below walks you through every way to run conflict checks in Clio—with ease.

With Conflict Check, your firm can:

• Search both platforms in one unified scan
• Identify conflicts across clients, contacts, calendar events, notes, and documents
• Run up to ten conflict checks simultaneously
• Re-run searches at any stage of the matter lifecycle
• Generate PDF reports for compliance tracking

This gives your firm a clear, defensible record of every check—helping you stay compliant without slowing down client intake.

Pretty cool right? Book your demo today to see how it all works.

Legal conflict check software

Legal conflict check software automates the process of cross-referencing clients and matter details against your firm’s database to identify potential conflicts of interest. By taking care of this time-consuming step automatically, it speeds up the process while reducing the chance of human error.

For firms using Clio Manage and Clio Grow, Clio’s new Conflict Check feature makes this process even easier by scanning across both platforms to uncover potential conflicts in contacts, matters, notes, documents, and calendar events—all in a single search.

Alternatively, integrations like Faster Suite for Clio Manage offer another way to streamline conflict checks. With the click of a button and a few search terms, Faster Suite’s built-in Conflict Check tool searches your Clio data—such as contacts, matters, matter notes, and billing records—and generates a comprehensive report. It’s a fast, straightforward option that many firms rely on to document their conflict review process.

Whichever approach you choose, the key is consistency. Using technology that centralizes your firm’s data and automates searches helps ensure every potential conflict is caught early, and that your firm stays compliant with minimal effort.

Attorney conflict check spreadsheet

Many firms still rely on an Excel spreadsheet to track potential conflicts, listing client names, addresses, birthdates, and related contacts, then using “CTRL+F” or “CMD+F” to search for matches or variations. It’s a familiar process, but it’s also slow, error-prone, and difficult to scale as your client list grows.

Spreadsheets can easily freeze or return incomplete results, especially when your firm has hundreds (or thousands) of entries. More importantly, manual searches leave room for oversight, and a single missed record can expose your firm to ethical risk.

With today’s technology, there’s a faster, more reliable way. Conflict-check tools within Clio Manage and Clio Grow automatically search across all your firm’s data—contacts, matters, notes, documents, and calendar events—so nothing slips through the cracks. 

By replacing manual spreadsheets with an integrated system, your firm can stay compliant, confident, and focused on clients, not cells.

Pick a law firm conflict checking system (and actually use it)

It isn’t news to lawyers that they need to have a conflict check system in place. You hear it in law school, during bar prep, and at countless CLEs. However, more lawyers are switching firms throughout their careers. Keeping a meticulous record of who you’ve represented and any other relevant contacts is more critical than ever.

Law firm conflict checking comes down to one thing

At the heart of it, law firm conflict checking is about consistency. Whether you use a dedicated tool, spreadsheet, or even binders, make sure to update your database regularly. Be thorough with your searches, and keep a record of any conflict checking you do for each case. Your practice, and your clients, will thank you.

With Clio’s Conflict Check, you can automate that consistency. By scanning every corner of your firm’s data and preserving a complete record of each search, you can stay compliant, efficient, and focused on what matters most—serving your clients.